Waiting
by mattmetzger
Summary: Jim refused to leave Spock behind then, and he refuses to do it now. So until Spock catches up, he'll be waiting. And playing with the children to pass the time, of course. Oneshot.


**Notes: Just as a little snack/****apology for my horrible delays. When life stops kicking me in the ass, I promise you guys can start.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

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Izzy Grey didn't believe in ghosts until they moved into that house, way back in '43, and the very next night, she did.

She wasn't the silly, easily-frightened sort (please, she was born and bred in _Montana_) and maybe she wasn't interstellar-space-travel-smart like her new husband, but she wasn't stupid either. She wasn't the type to believe in things that weren't there.

But there _was _something in that house. Simple as.

It was an old house - pre-warp, apparently - sitting out in the old part of Riverside that hadn't been given over to the new infrastructure of all the cadets and aliens coming in and out all the time. It was still famous, over two hundred years on from the Vulcan Genocide, as 'the Kirk house' and Izzy had been frankly surprised nobody had turned it into a museum or something.

"Oh, Captain Kirk himself didn't live here much, that's why," the estate agent had said, and Izzy had shrugged and they'd signed for it.

The first night they'd been there, she'd woken in her husband's arms to the creak of footsteps on the front porch, and she'd just _known _that they weren't alone out here, in the wild fields of a farming Iowa that was long since lost.

Strangely, even though she'd sent Harry to check for burglars, the thought hadn't really alarmed her.

* * *

The baby gave the game away. Whatever still lived in the Kirk house, it was interested in the baby, and after the odd scare of finding Chloe out of her crib (or alternatively, in it when she shouldn't have been) Izzy simply...got used to it. When Chloe would wave at the empty kitchen doorway during breakfast, both of her parents blithely ignored it, and Izzy tried to pretend that the excessive giggling wrought from her only daughter was _just _due to the mobile above the crib.

It was an easy intruder to ignore. It was nothing like all the silly ghost stories Izzy had been told as a child - tormenting the baby, destroying their things, damaging the house, screaming at them and slapping them in the night. Every night, she would hear the same heavy footsteps on the porch and an endless silence, and every day (or close enough) Chloe would play with some invisible friend that her parents pretended was just that.

When Bobby was born, he showed no interest in (or awareness of) their invisible house guest, and Chloe smugly and jealously guarded her territory and friend with all the fervour of any insistent three-year-old. It was also around the time that the ghost gained a name, when she declared to her father that 'I don't like Bobby and neither does Jim!' before storming off to indignantly tell 'Jim' all about her father's injustices.

After that, it became a quiet family joke, that the ghost of Jim Kirk lurked in their house and babysat their three-year-old daughter, and completely ignored their infant son.

* * *

When Chloe turned seven, she was still holding conversations with 'Jim' every single day that she was home - usually about school and her classmates. Izzy noticed that facts that she was seeming to learn from those conversations - facts that she was sure the school weren't teaching about Klingons and Romulans to _seven-year-olds_, and became more convinced that the ghost was real.

Bobby remained supremely indifferent to the whole affair - although he never quite made fun of his sister for her invisible friend, either.

The cement, for Izzy, was the newest addition to the family. Tabitha - already known simply as Tabby - reacted to 'Jim' the same way Chloe did, and often at the same time. Izzy could watch them from the kitchen: Chloe prattling on about her day, the baby giggling in the playpen, and both sets of eyes fixed on the same empty patch of air.

"I think he's real, Harry," Izzy said.

But Harry was an engineer, not the type to believe in ghosts, and blew it off as childhood fantasy.

"They're just playing, Izzy. They'll grow out of it."

By then, Izzy knew that he was wrong.

* * *

"...I _told _Frankie that but she said it's true and your ol' Bones must be wrong!"

Izzy rolled her eyes and turned up the volume on the news feed to drown out Chloe's insistent argument with Jim.

_"The Federation Summit Meeting at New Vulcan was disrupted this morning after an apparent assassination attempt upon one of the Vulcan ambassadors. Phaser shots were heard inside several of the government buildings approximately two hours ago, and although no deaths have been reported, it's been confirmed that several healers have been summoned from the nearest Federation planets..."_

"Hey, where are you _goin'_?" Chloe demanded loudly, and quite suddenly the warmth that permeated every inch of the house was gone.

"He'll be back," Izzy said, turning off the feed. "Come on. Let's get the two of you off to school."

When she got back, to a warm house, a data PADD was waiting on the kitchen table - complete with a hastily-written letter from a long dead man.

_Hi Izzy,_

_You're right. Jim Kirk, at your service. Kind of. I mean, I've been dead a long time, but I'm still waiting. I refused to go on without him then and I refuse to do it now. I said I'd wait here for him - it's one of the only places we both liked, though we weren't here very long. Might as well warn you about that - if he keeps his end of the bargain, he'll be back. Just to die. Might not even come into the house, but thought I'd give you a heads up._

_Sorry about your feed, by the way. I've been watching it since you left._

_'He' is Ambassador Spock of Vulcan, by the way. If you've heard much about me, you've probably heard about him. I panicked a bit this morning, you see. I want to be there, and get him back peacefully. Not some nutjob with a phaser shoot him in the head or something. Sorry about that._

_Could you do me a favor? Keep an eye on him? I'm out of touch - nobody's been here for a while - so I'm feeling my way around the technology updates. So could you keep an eye on him for me? Just in case?_

_Thanks,_

_Jim._

_PS: Nice kids. Except Bobby. He's a brat._

"Maybe I should haved named him Jim?" Izzy wondered aloud, with a little laugh, and tucked away the PADD for safekeeping.

He never wrote to her again, but the once seemed to bring about an understanding.

* * *

That was how it went, for the next ten years. Izzy keeping an eye on all the public information domains had on Ambassador Spock and his goings-on, and reporting it back to Jim, who kept to his invisible-friend-of-the-children role quite nicely. Just as Chloe grew out of Jim and into gossip and boys and (to Harry's horror) drama school, Tabby grew into a fascination with all things space, and quite happily took over Chloe's place in Jim's ghostly existence.

She only ever _saw _him the once - some five years after his letter, she finally investigated the pacing on the porch. Sitting on (or rather, _in_, due to his lack of substance) her porch rail was a surprisingly _young _man - thirty or so years old, and undeniably Kirk. They all knew his face, though she had expected to find the aged Admiral in her house, not the thirty-something Captain of the earlier years.

"Just the way it goes," Kirk had shrugged, when she'd asked, and turned back to look at the starlit horizon. "It won't be much longer."

"He's worth all that?" she'd asked.

He'd never answered - but she'd still heard the pacing every night, and knew the answer regardless.

And then, eleven years after his letter, things came to a head.

"Jim's jumpy," Chloe had told her mother that morning, as they prepared to go and visit Grandma. "I think something's happening."

"Well, I'm sure we'll find out when we get back."

"But Mom," Tabby butted in. "He might be gone when we get back!"

Jim had told them something, Izzy was sure of it.

"What if it goes wrong?" Tabby asked.

"Well, I'll stay here and make sure it doesn't."

It was a silly promise, made on the spur of the moment, but so it was that Izzy found herself alone in the house just before dusk, when a hovercar with a San Francisco plate pulled up to the farm gate - some hundred yards from the house - and three Vulcans emerged.

"What the...?" Izzy shot up from her seat, just as the warmth she knew to be Jim brushed past her arm and out of the open front door.

Two of the Vulcans were young - or at least not as aged as to appear it yet. The third even Izzy recognised as being ancient, but refused any physical assistance, and stood as tall as they did.

"You may return in the morning," he told his aides - if that was what they were, and they left without question as Izzy drew close.

"Excuse me, but what are you...?"

"Ambassador Spock, madam," he spread his elderly, now-crooked fingers in the Vulcan _ta'al _and his face softened almost imperceptibly. "I trust that Jim has forewarned you of this matter?"

His eyes didn't slid towards Jim's warm presence the way that Chloe and Tabby's did, but he was undoubtedly aware of him, and Izzy bit her lip. "He did, but..."

"But nothing," Spock said flatly, the deep baritone washing away her protest as if it were nothing. "My assistants have made all the proper arrangements, and will return for me in the morning. By then, all shall be well."

"You can't remain out here all night!" Izzy exclaimed, as he - quite suddenly - lowered himself to a cross-legged position leaning against one of the ancient fenceposts that marked off non-existent fields.

"I assure you, Mrs Grey, I shall hardly be present for the majority of the night, never mind the entirety of it."

The warmth - Jim - pressed against her front now, as if urging her back and away. Reluctantly, Izzy went, and Jim left her at the porch to - she presumed - return to the elderly Vulcan now seated in her front yard.

"This is it, then, Jim?" she murmured from the front porch. "This is what you were waiting for?"

She didn't go to bed that night, instead sitting out on the front porch and keeping watch. In the absolute darkness of Riverside nights out here, the Vulcan in his dark robes was swallowed by the black the moment the sun fell, but she kept watch regardless, a mug of cocoa steaming in her hands, and the blanket her mother knitted for her when she was pregnant with Chloe spread over her lap.

In the early hours of the morning, the faint grey glow caught her eye, and she watched, perfectly placid, as a fully-decorated Starfleet Captain in his early thirties smiled and laced his fingers with those of a young, dark-haired Vulcan in the less-recognisable science blues that hadn't been issued for decades. Hand-in-hand, they walked to the front gate, down by the dirt track road, opened it with a heavy creak that echoed back to Izzy, and disappeared altogether.

After dawn, the Vulcan aides returned for the body. By lunchtime, the news broke that Ambassador Spock had died, and by dinner, Izzy realised that the coolness of the house was never to be disturbed by Jim's silent presence again.

He left his mark on the family, however. Eight years later, Tabitha Grey was accepted into Starfleet Academy.


End file.
